


Manitoba

by menocchio



Series: Manitoba [1]
Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Humor, M/M, Parley, Past Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:26:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25296874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/menocchio/pseuds/menocchio
Summary: He may be sentimental, but he won't call it an anniversary.
Relationships: Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca/Ignacio "Nacho" Varga
Series: Manitoba [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848502
Comments: 16
Kudos: 40
Collections: Lacho Week 2020





	Manitoba

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Lacho Week Day 2 Prompt: Regret (as in: Lalo doesn't fucking have any)
> 
> If anyone notices my Spanish is wrong and/or excruciatingly clunky, please let me know! I tried but my ability to judge success is very minimal.

Lalo has been there for only ten seconds when it cements its reputation as the worst city in North America by soaking his suede shoes in a pile of dirty gutter slush three inches deep.

“Ay,” he says, blinking down at the ruined shoes. “What a place.”

He climbs into the waiting taxicab and directs the driver to his hotel. The car pulls away from the curb into the stream of smeared headlights that is Winnipeg's afternoon traffic. It is barely four and already dark.

Lalo contemplates the sensation of the icy wet now seeping through his socks. He is a little affronted at Ignacio's choice of location. In his world, you don't ring in five years trying to kill someone by hosting in a gray, frozen wasteland called _Winnipeg_. Who would want to die here?

“You're still a strange one, Nachito,” he murmurs, shaking his head. The taxicab driver glances at him in the rear view mirror, and Lalo meets his eyes unblinking, his smile fixed and pleasant.

The driver quickly looks back at the road.

He gazes out the window of the cab to the passing streetscape. The lights of downtown draw his eye in the distance: a small cluster of twinkling towers rising up out of the bleak prairie. Superimposed on the sight is his own reflection, desaturated and muted. His eyes are the only part of him that look alive. This climate does nothing for him; the silver at his temples, which looks so refined back home here merely makes him old. Another insult added to his day; another reason to kill Nacho Varga.

The list is quite long by now.  
  


* * *

  
His mistake was not looking deeper into Ignacio's background when he first went north. He sees that now.

He did a routine check into the men in their operation and found nothing of interest. Everything pointed to Ignacio being your typical young aspiring narco, albeit a smart one. Flashy car, tastelessly modern housing, a pair of beautiful junkies on the string. What little family he had, he seemed estranged from – on paper, he was fundamentally a man alone in the world.

Lalo was much more motivated to learn about him the second time around. It wasn't a difficult investigation (that Krazy-8 sure could scream). There are only a few things that would make a man turn his back on Salamanca patronage and power.

He could almost respect it, if it hadn't gotten his people killed and his home destroyed. But it did, so he couldn't. _Ojo por ojo_. So Lalo blew up a little upholstery shop with Papá inside.

The mouse became the cat – well, another cat? And the game was good. Apparently Nachito had been holding out on him. He was a vicious little _cabrón_ without the fear for his father hanging around his neck. In some respects, Lalo thinks he set the man free.

He is still waiting for the gratitude.  
  


* * *

  
He forgets the name of the bar as soon as he has entered it. The name, the address, the city – these details don't matter. They sink back into his mind until they might become useful again. His contact told him Ignacio was here and so now Lalo is here too. That is all that matters.

It's a sports bar, half full. Everyone in puffy coats of nylon and knit caps concealing flattened hair. Hockey is on the television above the bar and all the beers on tap are heavy Canadian brews owned by multinational labels. He cannot fathom anyone being here willingly. Perhaps it is a front for the game – the thought amuses him.

Nacho is in a booth against the far wall. No rubbing elbows with the locals for him. Alone, alone, alone. _N_ _o está solo, Nachito_.

He knows the moment the other man notices him: the quick once-over the fine coat, the blink-and-pause when he reaches his face. Lalo watches the recognition fill his expression like a flood overwhelming a dam.

Nacho used to conceal his thoughts when he talked to Lalo, but that's all well in the past now. When those lovely, thick-lashed eyes meet his, they are full of raw emotion. More frequently than not, loathing. But Lalo is captivated all the same. There is an intimacy to such honesty.

Lalo sits opposite him and props his chin in his hand, the unfamiliar leather of the glove cool against his face. He studies him and he smiles.

Nacho has let his hair grow a little; it's a cold climate for a bare skull. It suits him, Lalo decides. He looks softer, older. More sure of himself and his place in the world. All the uncertainty and scrabbling of his younger years behind him.

He doesn't look so much like his Ignacio anymore. Perhaps that was the point.

Nacho doesn't move. Nor does he say anything – quiet and watchful, always waiting for Lalo to speak first, to make the first move.

So Lalo does.

“On the way over here, I was thinking about that first time you came for me in Chihuahua. You remember?” He relaxes back in the booth, crossing his legs. Vinyl creaking beneath him. “Just when I was beginning to think you'd learned your lesson and decided to lay low, you come right at me. Eh? The desert in springtime, blood on the ocotillos? You remember?”

Ignacio had been so angry. Lalo remembers the whites of his eyes, wide around dark pits of grief. He'd had to get close to use the knife. It was the most romantic attempt on Lalo's life _ever_.

“I remember you rode away from that meeting in the back of an ambulance, you crazy son of a bitch,” said Nacho, leaning forward after a half-panicked look around the room to check if anyone had overheard his reminiscing. “How many stitches did it take to hold your guts inside – thirty?”

He clucked his tongue. “You checked on my medical records.” He put a hand on his chest, over the rock-steady beat of his heart. “Ignacio, I am touched.”

He redirects his gaze abruptly over Nacho's shoulder to the man standing at the end of the bar, who was watching them, obviously listening in. The man flinches, jostling his beer. Foam rises and flows over the top of the bottle. The man stares straight ahead and picks the beer up, pretending to drink it anyway. He is very pale. Clammy despite the chill in the bar from the occasionally open door.

Lalo leans over the table, putting his face inches from Nacho's. He switches to Spanish. “You know, you've killed a lot of my people these past few years.”

His expression is tight. “You almost burned my father alive. He can't walk or breath without an oxygen mask.”

“Yolanda had grandchildren,” he counters. It's easy to say now, after almost five years. “Six of them. Six children who will never taste her cooking again or learn her secret to posole. Miguel had a two-year-old son who never got to hear him sing.” The other men might have had children too, but he couldn't remember; besides, Miguel had been his favorite.

“I didn't kill them.”

“But you opened the gates to the sloppy dogs who did.” Lalo grimaces and makes a sound. Flicks his fingers like waving away a fly. “Let's not talk about the morality of our work? It's tedious.”

He looks like he wants to argue with that, but he bites the words back. Already regressing, Nachito?

As Lalo continues to smile at him, he sighs. His shoulders come down, his right hand comes up to press his eyes: a familiar gesture. His next words are directed at the tabletop.

“Your man said you wanted to meet to discuss something important.” English again, like the language alone might alleviate the danger. His eyes flick up. “What?”

What he does not reference, and what Lalo won't mention, are the two men currently being held hostage outside the city in exchange for each other's good behavior.

“I want to give you a chance to help me get back at the man who destroyed both our lives.”

“...You?” says Nacho pointedly.

He laughs, but it only becomes genuine when he sees the discomfort it causes Nacho. “Your sense of humor has improved with age. It's good to hear.” His voice goes cold. “But you know who I'm talking about.”

He shakes his head. “Fring's untouchable.”

He dismisses this with a brush of his hand. “No man is untouchable. Imagine if the two of us focused our efforts in the right direction for once, eh? Think of what we could accomplish.”

Nacho looks at him with narrowed eyes. Lalo watches him back, unblinking. It was like this, in the beginning. Nacho always knew what he was thinking but so rarely wanted to admit it; but Lalo looks at him long enough, and the other man always eventually folds.

Nacho clears his throat. “You know when you decided I had to come with you to see Don Eladio? We drove all night. Do you remember that drive?”

Lalo's eyebrows go up. _¡_ _Al fin tenemo_ _s_ _progresos!_

He leans forward, hands coming together. “ _Claro_.” He wags a finger at him. “You tasted good, Ignacio.”

A pause. “I was talking about the conversation we had. About the future.”

Lalo's face hardens. “Man sucks you off while you're driving across the desert in the middle of the night, and you want to talk about the conversation?”

Nacho's expression is very fixed. He looks like one staring into an abyss. “One is more relevant to our current situation. I meant no judgment about the quality of the...” His eyes slide sideways, to the bar. He straightens. “You know, perhaps we should continue this outside?”

_...Al fin tenemos progresos._

Lalo gestures for him to go ahead. Shoulders tense, Nacho shrugs into his leather jacket and makes for the door. He holds it open for Lalo; not good manners so much as wanting to keep him in view. So cautious, Nachito.

It's terrible outside. Their breath streams up into the air like they are a pair of overworked kettles, and their shoes crunch over the ice and salt on the sidewalk. It is even beginning to snow.

Lalo follows him down the block, hands stuffed deep into the large pockets of his new duffle coat. He is dancing a little on the ice: a minute up-and-down motion meant to broadcast his displeasure at the cold. It looks ridiculous and he sees Nacho buy it. In his pocket, Lalo's right hand tightens.

They reach an alley and Nacho makes his move, grabbing the front of his coat and pulling him out of the bright shelter of the streetlights. Lalo's back fetches up against brick.

Nacho's lips land about the same second Lalo's switchblade presses against his belly. They both go still.

Lalo feels the puff of air against his cheek as Nacho breathes through his surprise and tries to control his fear. He hears him swallow.

“What about your man out of town?” asks Nacho, barely a breath above a whisper.

“Expendable, for a chance at you. You're special like that. But!” Lalo smiles brightly and snaps the switchblade shut. “This can wait. I like your idea better.”

The switchblade disappears back into his pocket, and he pulls Nacho forward with his other hand, firmly gripping the back of his neck, tilting his face up.

Nacho is as compliant as a doll at first, still likely stunned from his brief brush with disembowelment. Then he is shaking it off and surging forward, mouth hard against Lalo's. He kisses like he always ran business: like he wants to be more cruel than he is. But for every nip of his teeth comes a soothing swipe of tongue afterwards.

“You want – I have something for you,” Lalo says between kisses. His blood is up, his pulse speeding. He fumbles for Nacho's hand and grips it hard, probably too hard. “You'll like this.”

He draws his shirt up and presses Nacho's palm to his abdomen.

Nacho's breath comes out in a gust of light laughter. “Yeah, I get it, you're doing alright for a man your age—” but his words fade as his fingers skid along the skin, tracing the line where the texture changes, where the scar splits Lalo in two.

“You like that?” he asks him, looming forward over him, holding his suddenly spasming hand in place so he can't jerk it back. “That's all you, Nachito.”

 _...Jodido enfermo,_ whispers Nacho, but Lalo can feel his dick growing hard against his thigh.

He laughs, delighted. “I knew you'd like it! Here, I'll take care of you, don't worry.” He reaches for his belt, and Nacho gives in, hanging his head and gulping for air. His new hair brushes Lalo's throat. It tickles.

He'll make him come, and then they'll talk about the future. It'll be like that long night driving south under the desert moon to his home; just he and Nacho, and the quiet air of fragile, thoughtful hopes. Ay, but listen to him. This nostalgia.

He may be sentimental, but he won't call it an anniversary.


End file.
